


Inkfinity Train

by AvaBlook



Series: All Aboard the Infinity Train [1]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine, Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-04 01:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21188924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaBlook/pseuds/AvaBlook
Summary: Henry has been trapped in the Studio for countless loops, and knows everything there is to know about it. At least, he thinks he does. Then he finds a new door in the Studio, and discovers he has a lot more to learn.





	Inkfinity Train

Henry had been through the Studio so many times now. He knew Joey’s whole twisted story like the back of his own hand--maybe better, considering how long his hands had been coated in the ever-present ink. He wasn’t even sure how long he’d been in the Studio at this point. Had it been hours? Months? Years? He had no way of knowing, not when everything repeated like it did, not when he had already forgotten hundreds of loops. 

He’d found every door that actually opened, every hidden room, every audio tape. He’d figured out all the places where Joey had erased the storyboard and redrawn it, making Henry’s vision flicker and blur as alternate versions of events overlapped. He’d fought all the monsters Joey had scrapped and abandoned in the margins. He’d gotten through the Studio without dying. And, on his last run through the Studio, he’d managed to do all the above at once.

But it wasn’t like it mattered. He was going to be stuck in Joey’s twisted little story for the rest of his life. Sooner or later, he’d forget he was even in a loop again, and start trying to find an exit that didn’t exist all over again.

At least then things would be new and interesting again for a few loops. Even the most twisted monsters from the dark depths of Joey’s imagination got stale and boring when you wound up face-to-face with them every day or two. 

The story restarted in exactly the same way it always did, with Henry arriving at the mostly-intact animation department to start the Ink Machine. He went about gathering the ritual items without really paying attention, letting his mind wander in the way he couldn’t afford to once the plot really got going.

He was making his way through the break room when he saw it. A section of the room that had always been boarded up was now open. Inside it, a trapdoor that had always been closed was now thrown open, revealing a hallway below.

Maybe it was a trap, but Henry couldn’t bring himself to care. He raced for the trapdoor and practically threw himself through it. The drop of a few feet was nothing compared to the several-story drops he was used to, and then there was a set of sturdy stairs leading further down. Henry made his way further down into the Studio eagerly, for once, excited to see  _ anything _ new after so much of the same over and over again. He turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, ready for whatever lay ahead.

A few feet in front of him was a door.

There were plenty of doors in the Studio, most of them “locked”, little more than outlines sketched onto the wall to give the place the illusion of being bigger than it was. This one was different. 

This door was red, a color he’d never seen in the Studio before, not even when he bled from the attacks he sustained. There was no knob, either, but two shiny golden handles, the one on the left positioned higher than the other. It was like nothing he’d seen in the Studio before, and the contrast made his head swim.

Henry was stepping forward before he knew it, reaching an arm out to grab at one of the handles before Joey could realize that the door wasn’t supposed to be here and erase it off the storyboards.

He grabbed at the handles like they were a lifeline and  _ pulled _ . The door didn’t budge, and Henry turned his attention to pushing with all his might. This door couldn’t be locked, could it? It had to open. After all he’d been through to find it, it  _ had _ to open!

As he pushed, the handles gave way slightly, not forcing the door open but scraping to the side, seemingly turning around a central point between the two handles. Henry jumped on it and tried twisting the handles clockwise, the same way he was used to turning valve wheels to shut off the pipes. 

The handles slid easily, and after they’d rotated enough to swap positions, the door pushed open.

Fresh air was the first thing Henry noticed, whipping by in a brisk wind. How long had it been since he’d been  _ outside? _ He had the occasional break from the Studio in Joey’s apartment, sure, but there was never fresh air, let alone wind, or a clear view of the sky… 

Henry looked up, desperate for a glance at it, but the sky he saw above him was red, covered in a thick layer of clouds, nothing like the sky he was used to. At least it wasn’t the ceiling, but still, it made Henry pause to take better stock of his surroundings. 

He’d stepped out of the Studio onto a small metal platform, with a bridge of some sort leading forward, to what looked like a giant train car with a similar door to the one he’d just come through. He looked back, to where the outer wall of the Studio should be, and saw an identical train car. Through the doorway, he could still see the dripping ink and rough wooden boards he’d gotten so unfortunately familiar with, but the outside was definitely a train car.

It was then that he noticed he was  _ moving _ . He was standing still, just outside the door to the Studio, but the air was whipping past him, and the cracked and dry earth below was flying by.

Henry had a  _ lot _ of questions. Where exactly was he? When had he gotten here? Where was this train going? Was this still Joey’s story, or something new?

For once, he actually had enough control over himself to ask. His body was under his own control, not moving on its own the way it was in Joey’s apartment. But there was no one here to ask, just the empty landscape below, the Studio behind him, and the train car in front of him.

Going back into the Studio was out of the question. He would love nothing more than to somehow save Allison and Boris and yes, even Tom, and find a way to bring them out here, but no one else restarted the story with him. He’d tried bringing them along before, but he always ended the story alone, and restarted it alone. There was no way to get them out. Hell, Henry had been lucky to make it out like this. He wouldn’t be so lucky again. Joey would erase the door, once he knew of it, and the story would continue on forever.

The ground underneath him was flying by at too fast a pace to be remotely safe to jump onto. If this really wasn’t Joey’s story anymore, than that meant that Henry didn’t have the protections that being the hero of the story afforded him anymore either. A jump like that would kill him.

That left the train car in front of him as the only viable destination. 

“Better press on,” Henry said to himself. He made his way onto the thin bridge between the train cars, careful to keep his balance as the train shook and rattled a bit beneath his feet. He had practice crossing narrow bridges, from all the times he’d crossed the hallway with the snapping board as he led Allison and Tom, but the Studio didn’t sway like this. At least there was a handrail here.

He reached the door to the next train car without incident, and stood in front of it for a moment, hesitant to open it. He had no idea what would be inside, but considering the last train car was apparently  _ the Studio _ , he doubted it would be anything normal.

He grit his teeth and twisted the handles the same way he’d done with the last door, pushing the door inwards.

Instantly, his ears were overwhelmed with the sound of running liquid, and Henry flinched for a moment, worried it was ink that he was hearing, that he’d just gone from one part of the Studio to another. The scene ahead of him was dark, but as his eyes adjusted, Henry relaxed at the sight of clear, running water, dozens of tiny waterfalls spilling from the ceiling and filling a shallow pool on the ground. The room was gently illuminated by hundreds of gently-glowing blue crystals studded in what looked like the rock walls of a cave. 

He was less than thrilled about going from one dark and wet place to another, but the blue was a nice change of pace, at least. 

Henry had spent so long wading through the ink that he wasn’t hesitant about getting his feet wet anymore. He ventured forwards and stepped into the cave without bothering to try finding a dry route through it. If he was stuck here in a loop, he’d figure it out eventually, and if not, he’d eventually find a way to get his feet dried off again, so there was no use worrying about it now. 

He hoped there would be another door here, maybe one that led to a place that was a little more like home, or at least someone that he could ask the ever-growing list of questions he had about all this. 

He tried to keep his gaze low as he crossed the room, to avoid stepping on any underwater obstacles, but it was hard to ignore the rest of the cave around him. After what felt like an eternity of ink and wood, the stone and water and crystal here were too strange and beautiful to pass by. The crystals’ light glinted off the waterfalls in ever-shifting patterns of bright flashes, the splashes his footsteps made echoed off the walls in lovely harmony, and the air smelled of rain instead of ink. It was impossible to focus on his footwork in a place like this. 

When he finally looked down again, the water around his feet was black.

Henry panicked, lifting one foot out of the ink on instinct as his eyes darted about, searching for any solid ground he could escape onto. He didn’t have an axe on him, or any kind of weapon at all, no way to fight back! 

But the liquid around his feet didn’t bubble, or spit forth any ink monsters. With a start, Henry realized the blackness was just the ink washing out of his shoes and into the water.

Right. It had been so long since he’d encountered real water that he’d almost forgotten it could get things clean. Almost forgotten that clean was a thing at all.

How long had it been since he’d been clean? Since his clothes didn’t chafe and stick to his skin, since his shoes didn’t squelch out ink with every step he took, since he’d seen his own skin unstained by the ink?

Suddenly, getting clean was a top priority. Henry hurried to get under one of the bigger waterfalls. Water poured over him, warmer than the ink could ever be, soaking him in a way that was pleasant, for a change. Black trailed down his body as the ink was chased from his hair, his skin, his clothes, washing into the water at the floor. 

Once he’d gotten out as much of the ink as he could, he reluctantly stepped out from under the waterfall. He was still wet, but not in the clinging, cold way that the ink was wet. He raised his hands to wring out the edge of his shirt, and that was when he saw it. 

On his right palm, a glowing green 414. 

How had he not seen this before? His hand had been covered in ink for… longer than he could remember, but it couldn’t have been there the whole time, right? He would have noticed the green of it in the Studio’s sepia world. He would have noticed the glow in the pitch-blackness of the Studio’s depths. Wouldn’t he?

How long had it been since he’d looked at his hands, actually seen them?

What was this number? Why was it on his hand? What was this train, and where was it going, and when had he gotten aboard? 

Henry walked on, pushing further into the cave, determined to find another person, another door, anything that could provide some kind of information.

He always had questions, Joey had said. And he did. He had new ones, now, lots of them. And he was determined to get the answers, for once. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not 100% sure what this is, either, and I'm not planning to do anything more with it, I just thought it was a neat idea and a cool pun title and had to play with it a bit.


End file.
